“WASHBOURNE”

[Mikkel]

What a lovely loco. Thinking back to your continental stock, there can't be many who have built such a variety of Europe's locomotives in your favoured periods.  And that's just a sample of a much greater population. It's re-assuring to know  that the modeller will never run out of possible prototypes.

[Northroader]

Just time, Mikkel. Thanks for your comments, I agree there’s a huge pool of prototypes to work on, and I prefer the small fry to large express engines.

[Northroader]

Right, geography lesson coming up. Here’s a map I’ve cooked up showing the MGWR as it was before getting absorbed into the GSR in 1924. From then on harsh economic realities became apparent.

The main line services were from Dublin to Galway, Westport, and Sligo. There are photos showing trains leaving Dublin formed up as obviously two portions, with an intermediate brake van, dividing at Athlone. There’s a typical nineteenth century network of branch lines, and the Western Extensions, Galway - Clifden, Westport - Achill, Ballina - Killalla, subsidised by the local ratepayers. I would think the first of these must have been the most scenic line on the MGWR system.

The 1930s saw rationalisation, with the Western lines just mentioned being closed, the main line tracks being singled, and Broadstone station being closed and the Works in Dublin transferred to a road services depot. The main line trains used the goods route for access to the Docks at North Wall to get to Westland Row (Pearse) station as a terminus. In connection with Dublin stations I tend to think of the pregroup designation, the last Irish trip I made was  in 1960, and in 1966 the anniversary of the 1916 Easter uprising saw the stations renamed after some of the leaders. The Dublin termini in the steam age were quite good examples of relatively small city stations.

In the 1950s The CIE used the old GSWR branch from Portarlington, on the main Cork line, to Athlone to reroute the Galway and Westport trains into Kingsbridge (Heuston) and the Athlone- Mullingar Section was mothballed. Simultaneously a “Beeching” style programme of branch line cuts was implemented. Now there’s only the Ballina line left, besides the original main line destinations, and Sligo services start from Amiens Street (Connolly)

[Edwardian]

'Castletown' was apparently Ballyglunin (opened 1860) on the Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway from Limerick to Claremorris, so, as you say, there was more than one route into Galway.  That would mean GSWR (from 1901), so sorry then to divert from the MGWR.

 

Still, it's a nice clip to start your day with ....

 

 

However, in my defence, I was confused by some dim recollection that some of the filming took place in the Maam Valley, and the interweb throws up references to efforts to restore Maam Cross station, trading (and who can blame them) on the Quiet Man connection. Query, would not the line have been closed by the time the film was shot?

 

Maam Cross was very definitely a MGWR station, on the Clifden extension, and is a late line (1895) designed to open up rural districts. These lines seem often to have been the first to close. I wonder whether some of these lines were subsidised? 

 

 

So, here is a quiet man at Maam Cross .....

 

 

 

[Northroader]

I really do like that film clip, James, thanks for that. All very solid GSWR setting. The Clifden line was built with a “Baronial Guarantee” I.e. the county council made up the shortfall out of the rates.

 

https://trakt.tv/shows/off-the-beaten-track-1997/seasons/1/episodes/2

 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2021 by Northroader

[Edwardian]

23 minutes ago, Northroader said:

I really do like that film clip, James, thanks for that. All very solid GSWR setting. The Clifden line was built with a “Baronial Guarantee” I.e. the county council made up the shortfall out of the rates.

 

https://trakt.tv/shows/off-the-beaten-track-1997/seasons/1/episodes/2

 

 

 

 

These Clifden extension stations seem very solid and mainline, yet this was a guaranteed, if not subsidised, line (was the local authority required to make up the shortfall in this case?), yet I don't see any compromise on 'mainline' railway infrastructure.  I wonder if there is a point here about the relative failure in the British Isles to grasp and facilitate the principles of the light railway, as apparently understood on an international level, i.e. to provide infrastructure proportionate to the traffic needs of the district?   

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

These Clifden extension stations seem very solid and mainline, yet this was a guaranteed, if not subsidised, line (was the local authority required to make up the shortfall in this case?), yet I don't see any compromise on 'mainline' railway infrastructure.  

 

Most of the station building at Maam Cross seems to be the stationmaster's house which, given the lack of any other sign of human habitation in the vicinity, coupled with the need to lure a company employee out to his doom, seems entirely understandable. I wonder where the signalman lived? As to the substantial-looking goods shed; there needs to be somewhere watertight to store sacks of grain etc. 

 

One shouldn't overlook the propaganda aspect: the blessings of civilisation coming down from Dublin upon the benighted papist bog-dwellers*.

 

*Not my opinion! But how it might, I imagine, have appeared to some cosmopolitan TCD-educated Dublin lawyer.

[Edwardian]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Most of the station building at Maam Cross seems to be the stationmaster's house which, given the lack of any other sign of human habitation in the vicinity, coupled with the need to lure a company employee out to his doom, seems entirely understandable. I wonder where the signalman lived? As to the substantial-looking goods shed; there needs to be somewhere watertight to store sacks of grain etc. 

 

One shouldn't overlook the propaganda aspect: the blessings of civilisation coming down from Dublin upon the benighted papist bog-dwellers*.

 

*Not my opinion! But how it might, I imagine, have appeared to some cosmopolitan TCD-educated Dublin lawyer.

 

Yes, but raised platforms (I suppose to accommodate existing stock), a very substantial goods shed and, I assume, fully signalled and interlocked etc.  Would a LR speed restriction have been a problem?  I don't know.  There was tourist traffic and a hotel at the splendidly named Recess.

 

The reality may have been that relatively few compromises were possible, but it does not look like any were attempted.  

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Yes, but raised platforms (I suppose to accommodate existing stock), a very substantial goods shed and, I assume, fully signalled and interlocked etc.  Would a LR speed restriction have been a problem?  I don't know.  There was tourist traffic and a hotel at the splendidly named Recess.

 

The reality may have been that relatively few compromises were possible, but it does not look like any were attempted.  

 

I note that the line's dates, 1895-1935, are also those of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway across Exmoor, also taking advantage of the Light Railway Act. That line too had (has) quite extravagant station buildings for the traffic of the district but was built chiefly for the tourist trade; I read that the MGWR had its eye on the tourist traffic too. The L&BR also had a Baronial Guarantee but its baron was of the press variety.

[islandbridgejct]

30 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

One shouldn't overlook the propaganda aspect: the blessings of civilisation coming down from Dublin upon the benighted papist bog-dwellers*.

 

*Not my opinion! But how it might, I imagine, have appeared to some cosmopolitan TCD-educated Dublin lawyer.

As a cosmopolitan, TCD-educated, Dublin lawyer, former papist, and descendant of benighted papist bog-dwellers, I'm really not sure where I should start....

 

The Midland always seemed to build big when it was using somebody else's money. The Clifden and Achill branches were built to a standard way above what others would pay. And I gather it only built its Mayo line from Athlone to Westport because other people were going to do it if it didn't, and it was afraid the line might fall into the clutches of the dreaded GSWR. It tried to block the Burma Road from Athenry through Tuam and Claremorris to Sligo, but then thought it could get its hands on it, only to be pipped at the post by the Waterford and Limerick, which got its hands on the entirety of the Limerick to Sligo line, adding "and Western" to its title. Unfortunately for the WLWR, it never did seem to realise that there was a reason nobody wanted to build these lines, and, unable to make any money from them, it promptly fell into the clutches of the GSWR.

 

The Clifden branch closed in the 1930s, but John Ford needed "The Quiet Man" to arrive by train, so Ballyglunin Station on the Athenry to Tuam section of the WLWR provided a suitably rural station to stand in for Maam Cross. John Wayne gets off the train and into the jaunting car for a trip across the Corrib at Cong, near Ashford Castle and on to the area around Maam Cross where the film is set. If you did that journey by car, it would take an hour and a half, so doing it in a jaunting car would be, well, intrepid. Anyway, the film "The Guard," set in Galway, has its harbour scenes filmed in Wicklow Harbour, and Excalibur was filmed in the Wicklow Mountains, so we don't mind too much about these inaccuracies.

 

The map of the MGWR gives a good view of the system, subject to one quibble. From Navan Junction, the Midland turned west to Trim. It was the Northern which, coming in from the east, turned north to Kingscourt. This was about protecting territory: the Midland wanted to complete the original Dublin-Belfast plan to have a line through Navan and Armagh to Belfast; the Northern wanted to build west to Trim and on into Midland territory. Each got a branch that neither wanted, and had to stay out of the other's territory. The Midland tried again in Cavan, but the Northern built south from Clones, giving an end on junction with 2 buffer stops, half way along the platform, facing in opposite directions.

 

It's interesting to compare how the GSWR built its Kenmare and Valentia branches, with tin sheds for stations, compared with the Midland's over-engineered approach. I imagine the Midland felt it had to build big when someone else was paying because it was never going to earn the money to build better infrastructure later. That said, Caherciveen on the Valentia branch did have a long carriage shed, and that must have been to protect the coaches from the weather.

 

An interesting what-if scenario for the WLWR is to wonder what would have happened if the GWR had bought it instead of the GSWR. I gather it was interested, but ultimately did a deal with the GSWR which boosted its traffic to Killarney, which it wanted, without the expense of the Limerick to Sligo line, which it really didn't. If it had bought the WLWR, would we have had a GWR-WCC to rival the MR-NCC? It might have flushed the LNWR out into the open, instead of skulking around with its shareholding in the GSWR.

 

(Thanks for the laugh about my ancestors. I never get too defensive of the former owners of the Irish railway network - who were a bunch of British capitalists and Anglo-Irish aristocrats - or of the subsequent management of CIE - who were a bunch of jumped-up, arriviste, pseudo-cosmopolitan, Dublin university educated, benighted papist former bog dwellers.)

[Northroader]

Thanks for that, Alan, informative and raising a quiet chuckle.

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, islandbridgejct said:

As a cosmopolitan, TCD-educated, Dublin lawyer, former papist, and descendant of benighted papist bog-dwellers, I'm really not sure where I should start....

 

As I said, a manufactured opinion. My maternal grandfarther grew up in Arklow, turning sixpences into farthings with the assistance of the DSER, so apart from the papist bit I'm in the clear!

 

10 minutes ago, islandbridgejct said:

An interesting what-if scenario for the WLWR is to wonder what would have happened if the GWR had bought it instead of the GSWR. I gather it was interested, but ultimately did a deal with the GSWR which boosted its traffic to Killarney, which it wanted, without the expense of the Limerick to Sligo line, which it really didn't. If it had bought the WLWR, would we have had a GWR-WCC to rival the MR-NCC? It might have flushed the LNWR out into the open, instead of skulking around with its shareholding in the GSWR.

 

Now that would have created an interesting problem in 1922... 

 

Presumably the LMS and GWR retained a shareholding in the GSR? After all, they held shares in each other.

[St Enodoc]

31 minutes ago, islandbridgejct said:

As a cosmopolitan, TCD-educated, Dublin lawyer, former papist, and descendant of benighted papist bog-dwellers, I'm really not sure where I should start....

 

The Midland always seemed to build big when it was using somebody else's money. The Clifden and Achill branches were built to a standard way above what others would pay. And I gather it only built its Mayo line from Athlone to Westport because other people were going to do it if it didn't, and it was afraid the line might fall into the clutches of the dreaded GSWR. It tried to block the Burma Road from Athenry through Tuam and Claremorris to Sligo, but then thought it could get its hands on it, only to be pipped at the post by the Waterford and Limerick, which got its hands on the entirety of the Limerick to Sligo line, adding "and Western" to its title. Unfortunately for the WLWR, it never did seem to realise that there was a reason nobody wanted to build these lines, and, unable to make any money from them, it promptly fell into the clutches of the GSWR.

 

The Clifden branch closed in the 1930s, but John Ford needed "The Quiet Man" to arrive by train, so Ballyglunin Station on the Athenry to Tuam section of the WLWR provided a suitably rural station to stand in for Maam Cross. John Wayne gets off the train and into the jaunting car for a trip across the Corrib at Cong, near Ashford Castle and on to the area around Maam Cross where the film is set. If you did that journey by car, it would take an hour and a half, so doing it in a jaunting car would be, well, intrepid. Anyway, the film "The Guard," set in Galway, has its harbour scenes filmed in Wicklow Harbour, and Excalibur was filmed in the Wicklow Mountains, so we don't mind too much about these inaccuracies.

 

The map of the MGWR gives a good view of the system, subject to one quibble. From Navan Junction, the Midland turned west to Trim. It was the Northern which, coming in from the east, turned north to Kingscourt. This was about protecting territory: the Midland wanted to complete the original Dublin-Belfast plan to have a line through Navan and Armagh to Belfast; the Northern wanted to build west to Trim and on into Midland territory. Each got a branch that neither wanted, and had to stay out of the other's territory. The Midland tried again in Cavan, but the Northern built south from Clones, giving an end on junction with 2 buffer stops, half way along the platform, facing in opposite directions.

 

It's interesting to compare how the GSWR built its Kenmare and Valentia branches, with tin sheds for stations, compared with the Midland's over-engineered approach. I imagine the Midland felt it had to build big when someone else was paying because it was never going to earn the money to build better infrastructure later. That said, Caherciveen on the Valentia branch did have a long carriage shed, and that must have been to protect the coaches from the weather.

 

An interesting what-if scenario for the WLWR is to wonder what would have happened if the GWR had bought it instead of the GSWR. I gather it was interested, but ultimately did a deal with the GSWR which boosted its traffic to Killarney, which it wanted, without the expense of the Limerick to Sligo line, which it really didn't. If it had bought the WLWR, would we have had a GWR-WCC to rival the MR-NCC? It might have flushed the LNWR out into the open, instead of skulking around with its shareholding in the GSWR.

 

(Thanks for the laugh about my ancestors. I never get too defensive of the former owners of the Irish railway network - who were a bunch of British capitalists and Anglo-Irish aristocrats - or of the subsequent management of CIE - who were a bunch of jumped-up, arriviste, pseudo-cosmopolitan, Dublin university educated, benighted papist former bog dwellers.)

I thought that might get you going!

[Edwardian]

25 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

As I said, a manufactured opinion. My maternal grandfarther grew up in Arklow, turning sixpences into farthings with the assistance of the DSER, so apart from the papist bit I'm in the clear!

 

 

After 2016 I would have particularly treasured Irish origins, as being suddenly practical, rather than purely romantic, but, alas, I seem to be Anglo-Saxon (possibly Viking on my mother's side*) to my Anglican core! 

 

* Probably, especially for those who have met her

[Northroader]

I notice that link to the Mariella Frostrup programme I gave seems to suffered the effects of B. X.T.  Now, James the Ernie Shepherd MGWR book I referenced has drawings  of the station buildings on the Clifden line, and as you’re such a talented builder?

 

P.S. test for Viking antecedents, does she have any fingers curling into her palm? (Tourette’s Syndrome)  This happened with my wife, and the doc remarked there was a lot of it about with Viking stock (she ain’t heard the last of it yet!)

Edited May 19, 2021 by Northroader

[Edwardian]

11 minutes ago, Northroader said:

I notice that link to the Mariella Frostrup programme I gave seems to suffered the effects of B. X.T.  Now, James the Ernie Shepherd MGWR book I referenced has drawings  of the station buildings on the Clifden line, and as you’re such a talented builder?

 

I went on to the link, but did not try to play

 

11 minutes ago, Northroader said:

P.S. test for Viking antecedents, does she have any fingers curling into her palm? (Tourette’s Syndrome)  This happened with my wife, and the doc remarked there was a lot of it about with Viking stock (she ain’t heard the last of it yet!)

 

In my mother's case it was more the reddish hair,  and the head-splitting with axes, of course.

 

Her family is certainly from within Danegeld.

[Regularity]

56 minutes ago, Northroader said:

(Tourette’s Syndrome)

I think you might mean Dupuytren's contracture, which sounds like a move in Mornington Crescent?

[islandbridgejct]

25 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

As I said, a manufactured opinion. My maternal grandfarther grew up in Arklow, turning sixpences into farthings with the assistance of the DSER, so apart from the papist bit I'm in the clear!

 

 

Now that would have created an interesting problem in 1922... 

 

Presumably the LMS and GWR retained a shareholding in the GSR? After all, they held shares in each other.

 

Manufactured, I know, but far too good to pass up!

 

As to the grouping issue in 1922, or 1924-5 by the time the Free State was able to look at these things, the reason for not amalgamating the GNR(I) and SLNCR were that they ran on both sides of the Border. The Fishguard and Rosslare Railways and Harbour Company built and owned the section between Waterford and Rosslare, and was jointly owned by the GSWR and GWR. Part of the 1901 deal between the 2 companies was that the GSWR would buy the WLWR. Post 1925, the GSR and GWR owned the shares. Post 1948, it was CIE and BR, but CIE eventually got full ownership, in plenty of time to run it down to closure. The County Donegal was owned by the GNR(I) and NCC, and was cross border to boot, so it couldn't be touched and was run by another joint committee.

 

Meanwhile the DSER only wanted to amalgamate with the GNR(I).

 

So if the GNR couldn't be amalgamated because it was a cross-border line, and an amalgamated company would also have been a cross-border line rather than an Irish company with foreign shareholders, that could have left the Great Southern and Western Commmittee, the Waterford Limerick and Western Committee, and the GNR(I) outside the fold. The only reason for amalgamation was that the companies were giving notice of termination of service, so I imagine something along the French model, where the MGWR would be taken over by the State by 1925. The GNR(I) and DSER would amalgamate voluntarily at the same time, and the other companies might limp on into the 1930s, but the crash and the economic war would lead their owners to do a dirty deal with Mr deValera, leading to state control by 1933, and integration of the remaining lines into the Midland. So by 1933, we've got to where we were in 1945 anyway. Damn, there has to be a better scenario than that!

 

So let's suppose instead that the LMS, GWR and State railway continue until 1948, you could perhaps have Black 5s and J15s meeting Halls and rebuilt 4-4-0s at Limerick Junction; but unless there's a way to get a crimson lake Kerry Bogie or D2, alongside an emerald green Woolwich, I don't see much point. Anyway, a battleship grey J15 with a few 6-wheelers in CIE deep green with eau-de-nile stripes is about as perfect as railways get.

 

Alan

 

 

[Northroader]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

I think you might mean Dupuytren's contracture, which sounds like a move in Mornington Crescent?

Simon, you’re correct, I’m having a senior moment.

[Northroader]

Just happened to be browsing this afternoon, and quite accidentally found this story. Best wishes to them in their efforts, and nice to see it’s described as a “pop-up” Line, something I occasionally get blamed for.

https://www.focustransport.org/2020/07/an-irish-rail-story-resoration-of.html

edit: Oh, and here’s another link from theirselves:

https://www.connemararailway.ie

 

Edited May 22, 2021 by Northroader

[Northroader]

While I’m at it, following James’ film clip of the “Quiet Man”, a revisit to Ballyglunin (“Castletown”) station, which has had a very good refurbishment in the last few years. A pleasant stroll round the place, loop and goods siding, nice small stonebuilt station and signalbox, just short of a train and a few goods wagons. WL&WR roots, then GS&WR, what more could you need?

 

[Northroader]

Some progress to report, i’ve got the backscene support fitted to the baseboard. For now with unadorned hardboard, but you’re invited to take in how it defines the extent of the layout much better than having a plain baseboard.

[Edwardian]

Love it already. Your layouts always cheer me up!

[Donw]

Delightful.   After all that Irish stuff you have been feeding us I couldn't help but think  that van just needs a UI between the G and N  and E&S between the N and the last S. Although looking at the Wagons Glen Morangie looks more appropriate.

Washbourne seems a long way from the Seven Sisters

 

Don

 

 

[Northroader]

Ye dinnae ken “Washburn” then, Don? Dinnae fash yersel, thems juist passin throo the noo. There’s still a lot of “Irish stuff” to come yet awhile.

 

Now, this ain’t a send up, just encouragement for people who are a bit diffident about attempting sign writing. Here’s the van our postman is using for his deliveries!